Elizabethan Lodge No 7324 has what is likely to be a unique privilege of honouring three Monarchs at each Festive Board. We all begin by Toasting The King, Charles III. In Middlesex we have a ‘slow’ Fire, adopted as a mark of respect following the death of the then King, George VI. He having been the Provincial Grand Master of Middlesex from 1924 until his accession to the Throne in 1936.
Elizabethan Lodge was Consecrated in 1953 and named in honour of the then new Queen, Elizabeth II. After her death in 2022 the Lodge adopted an additional Toast.
It is given after the Toast to “The King, the Craft and Royal Arch Freemasonry” and before the Toast to “The MWGM, HRH The Duke of Kent”
The Toast, with no fire, is ‘To the Blessed and Glorious Memory of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’.
Thus in the space of about a minute at each Festive Board the Lodge honours three Monarchs, spanning over a Century since 1924. The King, Middlesex Fire, The Late Queen.
Submitted by W Bro Howard Hughs.
